


Aἰών

by renaissance



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Lives, Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major Spoilers, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-16 12:39:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17549846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: Everyone lives. Or else.





	Aἰών

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangeallure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/gifts).



> hi strangeallure - in your requests, you mentioned that you like time loops, so i hope you enjoy what i've done with the trope :)
> 
> this is a fix-it for a dark moment in canon, so this fic contains some heavy content along the way. please be sure to heed the warnings in the tags.
> 
> many thanks to my beta reader!

I woke with a jolt, clutching my stomach where the sharp pain from the bullet wound still lingered. Had they operated on me, taken it out? I barely remembered the ride to the hospital, though I knew I must have come here somehow. I remembered, in snatches, being hauled into the ambulance, and Henry—what was left of him—into another; I don’t know if anyone rode with me in the ambulance, or if I went into surgery, for how long… I do remember the hospital room. Waking up in the glow of early morning light through the windows and fluorescent tubes in the corridor outside my room, the low hum of medical equipment; I was delirious from all the blood I’d lost and I could barely open my eyes to take it all in.

Except I was no longer in the hospital. This was the room I stayed in at the country house, where I had woken yesterday morning, with no knowledge that anything so terrible was about to occur. This was the plush bed, the old sheets, the light, flapping curtains; there was no wound on my stomach but it hurt all the same. This must have been a dream within a dream.

In the hospital room, I had dreamt that there was a figure before me. “I am upset,” he said to me, “by this turn of events,” and I thought, _Tell me about it_. He continued: “I did not mean for this to happen.”

He was tall, broad, and dark in a shapeless way, like the reflection of a well-cut suit in a puddle. I said, “Henry?”

“No,” he said. “No, not Henry. But you will keep him alive.”

“It’s too late,” I said. When I closed my eyes I saw the gun pressed to Henry’s temple. “It’s too late.”

Though I could not see the man’s face, I somehow knew that he was giving me an accommodating smile—that, I suppose, is the magic of a dream. “You do not understand yet,” he said. “That is not how time works.”

I didn’t understand what he said, and my mind must have rejected it: here I was, dreaming of the country house. This was a dream I could luxuriate in. I stayed in bed for some time, but it seemed I was lucid, and I started to grow bored—so, stumbling a little because of the phantom ache in my gut, I wrapped myself in a robe and made my way downstairs.

It was then that I began to doubt that I was dreaming. The sensations in my feet as I crossed the floor were too real, the feeling of the air against my skin. This was improbable, if not entirely impossible. I was unharmed, I was at the country house. Now it seemed that last night was the dream.

I found Francis in the kitchen, making himself a liquid breakfast: a screwdriver. This felt familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. So much had happened yesterday that I’d lost hold of the details. He looked up and half-heartedly smiled at me. This, I was sure, was the same smile he’d given me yesterday, an expression on the verge of losing hope. Charles had been running us both ragged, though I think neither of us would have wanted to be anywhere else.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Ten, or thereabouts,” Francis said. “I don’t know. I haven’t got a watch on.”

If this were a dream trying to convince me it was ten in the morning, it was doing a very good job of affecting Francis’ casual manner, the lazy way he dressed in the morning, the limited but expressive repertoire of cocktails he could make.

“Where’s Charles?”

“He came down for coffee, as per. Now he’s back in his room.” Francis peered at me over the rims of his pince-nez. “Are you quite alright?”

That’s right, he _had_ been making a screwdriver: I remembered coming down the stairs to see him pouring orange juice into a glass, and thinking how nice it was that he was having a stab at being healthy, then, my face falling, watching him add a generous slog of vodka.

“Can’t you tell this has all happened before?” I asked him.

“Yes, with Charles. These things do tend to fall into patterns.”

“No, I mean—” I paused, thinking how best to say this without sounding like the madman I knew I was becoming. Somehow, what ended up coming out of my mouth was this: “At the bacchanal, did you draw blood?”

Francis put down his bottle of vodka with a clatter against the counter and made a frustrated noise. “Christ, Richard, you’re still obsessing over that?”

“You saw Dionysius,” I said. “Henry and Camilla both said as much, said you saw him before you even—the farmer—you know. Did it demand a blood sacrifice?”

“Yes.” Francis did not sound happy to admit to this; his whole demeanour closed up. “We drew blood from our thighs, so no-one would see it and think to ask. I’m surprised we were lucid enough to make such a decision, to be honest.”

“Could you do it again?”

“Could I?” Francis said. “I wouldn’t.”

I sucked in a breath. “I think I saw a God last night.”

Francis rolled his eyes, and turned away from me. I saw his head tip back as he downed a good quarter of his screwdriver. His refusal to answer me left me indignant, but I knew that I was raving, and there was no reason for Francis, living ignorantly in uneventful yesterday—today—to believe me.

I knew also that there was no way I could explain the circumstances under which I’d seen the God, except that I had drawn blood—that, this time, I had been the sacrifice to summon the God. I didn’t know which God I’d seen; my mythological knowledge was not as good as it ought to have been. Not Dionysius, I assumed, but rather it must have been some God of time: time had come undone around me. I was reliving the previous day, and this God wanted me to save Henry.

Henry was on first name terms with a God. That was the least surprising part of this.

I expect it seems most unrealistic that I would get over my skepticism so readily, but place this in the context of everything that had happened in recent months: I now thought it was almost inevitable that the ancient Gods would meddle in our affairs, since we—or rather my friends, who had included me so inextricably in the aftermath of it all—had meddled in theirs. There was likely little else to do on Mount Olympus these days.

 

* * *

 

It was disconcerting, at first, to watch Francis going about things in precisely the same manner as he had the previous day. Conversely, I worried that time would take great turns if I did not do the same, that little changes would cause great problems. I set about obsessively reconstructing what I remembered doing. This was mostly studying French, for a test I was now unsure if I’d ever take. Perhaps I would be repeating this day for the rest of my life, taking a bullet to the stomach, and then waking up at the country house to try to fix things yet again. At the very least, I would become excellent at French.

I also had time to think about where the whole sorry series of events had begun, and what I would have to change: the phone call. If I didn’t answer Henry’s call, then Charles wouldn’t have that tinder to the firewood of his paranoia, and he would stay home. We could take time to let him recover, and slowly, the rift between him and Henry would heal.

Cooped up in my own head, time passed quickly that afternoon. Time, of course, was now a relative concept. As it grew closer to six—roughly when Henry had called—I realised I hadn’t eaten breakfast, or lunch. I had been sitting all afternoon and hadn’t felt the lethargy, but as I stood now it hit me in one great, crashing wave. I still had that psychosomatic pain in my stomach from the gunshot wound. Limping a little, I dragged myself upstairs to Charles’ bedroom, where I would hopefully keep him occupied while the phone rang in the corridor outside.

The door was half-open. I knocked, and heard a grunt of assent, so I slipped inside. The room was the same wreck it had been yesterday, and Charles was lying on the bed with a bottle of Bombay gin in hand. Even red in the face and decomposed, he maintained his classical sort of beauty: a man in a painting, taking a holiday in the real world for a lark. He didn’t look like a killer, not even an unsuccessful one.

He was looking at me—not expectantly, but almost challenging me to say something. I hadn’t planned an opening line. After a few moments of tortured silence, I said, “Where’s the cat?”

Charles shrugged. “Why should I care?”

“You were the one who brought it here,” I said, careful not to raise my voice or in any way indicate that his abandonment of the cat bothered me.

“You think I need the company?” Charles laughed. “I thought you and Francis dragged me out here to isolate me.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that. It was only a half-truth: around people, Charles was a danger to others; left to his own devices, he was a danger to himself. I sat on the edge of the bed so that, if need be, I could wrestle him down. I was limp-limbed and ill-equipped, but rather I hurt myself than have to live this day a third time.

Charles continued: “Well, I don’t mind it much. I know you’re on my side, Richard. Francis is Henry’s man, but you believe me, don’t you?”

There were so many answers to that question. I don’t think any of us could’ve said for certain whether we were on Henry’s side, but I knew that, after yesterday, he was on ours. Before I could hazard a response, the phone rang.

“Francis will get it,” I said. My heart was beating so fast I was surprised it didn’t burst right out of my chest.

“Who do you suppose is calling?” Charles asked. He was amused by it; he didn’t know this was a life-or-death sort of situation. “Do you think it’s Henry?”

“Why would it be Henry?”

I was too quick to respond, but Charles didn’t pick up on that. “He’s always _calling_ ,” he said, “with his little secret codes. Going behind everyone’s backs to get what he wants. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying to work out where you’ve hidden me. Then he’s going to—”

“Charles. He’s not trying to kill you.” If only he knew, I thought. “He probably just wants to know that you’re well.”

“So it is him?”

“I never said that.”

“You said he wants to—”

“ _If_ it were him calling.”

We lapsed into silence while the phone continued to ring. I was on edge; I’d said too much. Then again, there was no way Charles would believe that I had travelled back in time to stop him from trying to kill Henry. The latter part, maybe, but not the former. He certainly looked thunderous, at the very thought of Henry. Perhaps the worst part was that, even now, I could understand where his fears stemmed from; at times I’d even begun to experience them myself. The difference was that I knew where these thoughts ended, and how to stop them from spilling over into tragedy.

At last the ringing stopped. I listened carefully for talking, but heard nothing—in which case, Francis was still in the attic, and we were safe.

“You see,” I said, “whoever it is, it couldn’t have been very important.”

Charles sat up, looking all of a sudden alert. “Surely Francis answered it?”

“No,” I said. There was a strange feeling running through me, like the soles of my feet were floating off the floor and pushing the rest of me upwards. “He was in the attic, last I saw.”

“So you arranged for Henry to call now, when you knew Francis would be busy.” He let out a short, manic laugh. “But it was your bad luck you happened to be stuck with me, wasn’t it? I was wrong to trust you.”

I knew how it looked. I was getting quite good at replaying the past, seeing how my words and actions had led us to this point. I’d been reckless: too much the time traveller, not enough the peacekeeper.

“Why don’t you get some sleep,” I suggested. “You’re not thinking straight.”

I made to get up from the bed, but Charles grabbed me by the wrist. “You _want_ me to sleep, don’t you? And while I’m out like a light, you’ll call up Henry, and you’ll tell him to come here so he can—”

“That’s nonsense.”

“I’m too much of a liability,” Charles said, tugging at my arm. “He knows I could tell anyone what he did, and he wants me out of the picture.

“You’re not making any sense,” I said. I knew immediately that this was the wrong thing to say. You had to speak calmly to Charles; if he sensed panic, he would bolt, like a horse to the crack of a whip.

“Why should I wait for Henry to find me?” Charles’ face split into a frightening smile. “I’ll go to him.”

Then with his free hand, he reached under the pillow and pulled out Francis’s aunt’s beretta.

I had been wrong. There was no crisis point to be averted when the end had already begun.

Charles pulled me along after him, into the corridor, towards the upstairs phone. I was too tired to fight back, or try to pry him off, or do anything else, really, other than shout for Francis. If the attic was soundproofed enough that he’d missed the phone call, there was no way he’d hear me now. Perhaps he might hear Charles telling me to, “Shut up, shut up.”

He stowed the gun in his pocket and dialled Henry’s home number. I was impressed that he could remember it in his current state, but it was a useless skill while Henry was staying with Camilla at the Albemarle. I called for Francis again—now, while the phone rang pointlessly and Charles waited in tense quiet, there might be a chance he’d hear me. He didn’t, and Charles gave up. He threw the receiver down and it bounced off the cradle, dangling off the edge of the table.

One last time. “Francis,” I shouted; then, weakly, “For fuck’s sake.”

“I’m not getting him involved,” Charles said. His iron grip still holding me hostage, he pulled me downstairs, just as I began to hear footfall from the attic.

Charles took me through the front door and out to the car. He pulled open the driver’s side door—had we really been so stupid as to leave it unlocked?—and pushed me onto the driver’s seat.

“Take me to him,” he said.

As I fell backwards, that familiar sharp pain in my stomach made itself known. It subsided, and I looked up, to see that the gun was now pointed at my temple. I opened my mouth to say something, but what was there to say? If I died now, I wouldn’t be able to go back and try this again. I couldn’t imagine time travel working that way.

I said, “I don’t have the keys.” Francis did. A few minutes it ago it had been me on Charles’ side, and Francis his conniving enemy. Now I didn’t know what my role in all this was. I don’t think Charles knew.

“Well that’s—”

The front door to the house swung open with a loud clap; I heard Francis shout, “Charles! What in the name of God are you doing?”

Charles spun, and the gun left my temple. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see it pointing at Francis.

“You can drive me,” Charles said. “Get the keys.”

“Alright, let’s not be hasty—”

Charles kicked at the gravel and it scattered furiously. “I’m tired of waiting! I’ve been waiting inside this damn house for three days now, and for what? Henry’s trying to kill me, my own _sister_ won’t even see me, and you two want to lock me up. You’re all plotting against me. Am I that much of a nuisance to you?”

“No,” Francis said.

He had aimed for an imploring tone, but he wasn’t a good liar. I knew that he was fond of Charles. I was too. Right now, though, Charles was like a speeding car, burning through gas and leaving a noxious trail in his wake. We couldn’t help him when he was like this.

“Put down the gun,” I said, getting slowly out of the car, “and we’ll talk about it.”

“Come inside,” Francis pleaded. This time, the note of desperation was genuine; as I closed the car door behind me and looked back to Charles, I realised why.

He’d turned the gun on himself, pressing it to the junction of his neck and his chin.

“Maybe it’s me,” Charles said. “Maybe it’s my fault.”

 

* * *

 

The worst part was waiting.

I called the hospital while Francis, on his knees, retched onto the gravel. There was an ambulance, eventually. I sat on the gravel with my arm around Francis and tried to cry. Instead I felt numb, hollowed out. I hadn’t eaten, had barely drank, and I could still feel the wound to my stomach. When the paramedics came, they told us they could only have one of us in the ambulance, so of course neither of us went. I walked to the driver’s seat and collapsed against the side of the car halfway through trying to open the door; Francis drove.

Emotionally, he recovered faster than I did. I later learnt that this was because he’d ducked into the house for three successive vodka shots while I was talking to the paramedics. I don’t know how he managed to drive in that state, but he did, and safely. He was calm talking to the doctors, gentle with Camilla—

I do not want to dwell on Camilla. From the hospital, we called the Albemarle to tell her and Henry what had transpired. This time, unlike the first, there was no coherent explanation for this. It was just Charles, self-destructing. When I situated these two days next to one another, I could see how he had been in the same frame of mind for both. The first time around, it was lucky for Charles that Henry had taken the gun, otherwise that altercation in the Albemarle might have ended the same way.

Unlike yesterday, this time I witnessed the aftermath. There was no life-threatening wound to keep me from watching Camilla break down in the hospital, Henry awkwardly refraining from comforting her, perhaps afraid he’d make it worse. I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t even know how I was still awake.

I slept eventually, my head on Francis’ shoulder, in the hospital waiting room. It wasn’t real sleep. I woke every few minutes with the jerky rise and fall of Francis’ chest as he dozed. Henry was awake, too, sitting still as a statue but eyes alert. Camilla was with Charles as a team of very fine doctors tried, fruitlessly, to save his life.

 

* * *

 

At last I saw sunlight, beginning to creep through the windows. It was then that the God appeared to me again.

“Not yet,” he said.

“It’s going to happen to me again, isn’t it?” I asked. “The whole awful day.”

He shook his head. “What fun would it be,” he said, “if every day were the same?”

 

* * *

 

I woke in the country house. The height of the sun in the sky told me it was around ten; I’d expected as much. What fun would it be if every day were the same? There would be changes, I knew, but only because I was here again, with the foresight to bring them about. Cause and effect.

In the kitchen, Francis was making a screwdriver. My phantom stomach wound didn’t hurt as much as it had yesterday, but I hadn’t eaten in about forty hours, and I was ravenous. I pulled half a dozen bags and boxes out of the pantry—different cereals, English muffins, crackers, an old but well-preserved Christmas cake—and covered them in milk, butter, cheese. It didn’t matter what went where, in what order. I just ate, while Francis stared at me with his mouth half-open.

“I have never,” he said, “seen you eat so much.”

“I didn’t eat at all yesterday,” I said, with my mouth full of buttered Christmas cake. I caught myself: “At least, feels like I didn’t.”

Francis continued to look unconvinced. I shrugged.

“Should we see if Charles wants to join us?” he asked hopefully.

I didn’t want to think about Charles so soon after yesterday. “Leave him. We don’t want to make him feel like we’re forcing him into anything. It’s better to let him get through this in his own time.”

This was something I’d learnt first-hand yesterday. I must have sounded authoritative, because I like to think Francis looked rather impressed. Maybe it was only because I had started thinking of myself as impressive—I had, after all, travelled backwards in time, twice. This put me in a good mood. As good a mood as I could be in, haunted by the last two days, but there was something freeing about knowing it was all reversible. The God didn’t just want to save Henry: he wanted to save Charles, to save the lot of us; from ourselves, from each other. To give us a second chance to rebuild what had brought us all so perilously close in the first place.

While I waited for the phone call, I did more intermittent French study, and I napped—only after asking Francis to wake me up at five. I had a theory about how to go about things today. Charles was in a state, and he needed to work through things on his own. I realised now that he’d likely followed me and Francis to the Albemarle, seen our car while he was driving around—how could he have known Henry and Camilla would be in? So I thought, this time we let the phone call with Henry happen, we let Charles have his panic, and then we don’t go looking for him.

And this way, if anything happened, it wouldn’t be my fault.

I wasn’t as good at forgetting yesterday as I wanted to be.

Francis came by my bedroom at five on the dot, shaking me awake by the shoulder. “I’ve been up in the attic. I was on the phone to my aunt, and she mentioned she’d stashed a jar of coins up there in the sixties. It’s finders keepers. I’ll keep looking until seven; if there’s no luck, I’ll make dinner. Why don’t you try to coax Charles out for it?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing perfectly well that wouldn’t happen, “I’ll do that.”

I wish I had picked a later time for Francis to wake me, but I wanted him to be very firmly in the attic when the phone rang so that I could take care of it. The downside of being awake by five was that I now had about an hour to fret over what was about to happen; to remember my script. I don’t think it would have mattered if I said things differently to two days ago, but at the time this seemed vital. Charles had to hear this conversation and be driven to do the exact same things as the first time—maybe in a different order, and hopefully with a different outcome.

At last I heard ringing. I tried to recall how long I’d waited before going to answer it; not long. I went to the kitchen and picked up the phone from the receiver.

“So there you are,” Henry said.

“Yes.”

 

* * *

 

It all went according to plan: Charles overheard the conversation, I made a tokenistic attempt to console him, I was rebuffed, and later Francis found me to tell me Charles was gone. We searched at the bars, on campus, around town. I could sense Francis’ agitation was growing, and soon he would say, “You don’t think he’s gone to the Albemarle, do you?”

“Surely not,” I said. This was not what I’d said the first time. “Does he even know they’re there?”

“I don’t know,” Francis said, “but I’d wager he could make a decent guess.”

“And if he sees us driving around, and follows us?”

“That’s a very specific scenario.” Francis narrowed his eyes at me. “You’ve never stalked anyone before, have you?”

I was relieved he didn’t guess at time travel, though there was no reason that he should. “Why,” I asked him, “have you?”

“Of course not. It just sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

“Look, I’m only guessing. I don’t think anyone can know what’s going on in Charles’ head at the moment.”

Francis sighed. “I suppose not.”

“Let’s go back. He’ll show up.”

I had to be confident about it. Francis was visibly upset by this whole affair; I hadn’t noticed that the first time around, but it was clear now, from my vantage point. I wanted to get his mind off it, and mine too. I remembered being sick with waiting yesterday, terrified that time might not reset. I didn’t want to go through that. Not tonight.

We drove back to the country house, picking up food on the way. It was dark by the time we got back. I went straight for the kitchen and recovered the bottle of vodka that Francis had been drinking that morning.

“What do you say?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m too worried to enjoy myself.”

I held the bottle out and shook it. “Take your mind off it.”

We sat out by the lake, dipping our feet in the water. The air was warm but fresh, the smell of flowers and leaves on the wind. Everything was fuzzy around the edges; the sparks of moonlight caught on crests across the lake’s surface, the moonlit-green grass, the beautiful navy blue of the sky. I didn’t have the time to appreciate any of this, the first two times I’d lived through this night. It all felt _right_. The scales were balanced and time was flowing forwards.

I was in a ridiculous, sentimental sort of mood, and the vodka had loosened my tongue. “You helped me a lot yesterday,” I said to Francis. “Really kept your cool.”

He laughed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ah,” I said. “I can’t tell you.”

We were sitting so close our shoulders brushed whenever we passed the bottle between us. He gave me a curious look. “Really?”

“Really. It’s… you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

I couldn’t tell him, I thought, because this time I wouldn’t go back in time.

These were famous last words. I was so subsumed by this fantasy—that it had _worked_ —that I almost missed the sounds from the front of the house: tyres skidding across the gravel outside, a car door slamming, two voices shouting. Francis and I exchanged a look, and before, I think, either of us realised it, we were on our feet, running around the side of the house, vodka abandoned in the grass. The world tilted from side to side like a precarious carnival ride. I wanted to throw up.

There was Camilla, pulled up in Henry’s car. She opened the passenger door and hauled Charles out. “Get out, get out,” she was saying, as she threw him to the ground.

I had a horrible feeling about this.

Closer up, her face was red and swollen, and there were tears pouring from her eyes. There was a smudge on her white blouse that I thought might have been blood.

“What happened?” Francis asked her, though he was looking at Charles.

“This _bastard_ ,” Camilla spat, “stalked me and— _Henry_ , oh God—”

She broke down sobbing, and I ran to her out of instinct, putting my arms around her. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that she pushed me away. It was thoughtless of me; but then, I was drunk, and I still didn’t really understand what had happened.

Charles spoke: “He shot himself. We were making a scene—he had my gun—then the innkeepers—”

From this fragmentary summary of events, I could piece together a nightmare I’d lived through once already. Even without Francis and I there, Charles had arrived to shoot Henry, and Henry had somehow gained possession of the gun. Charles and Camilla continued the explanation in bits and pieces; I had stopped listening. I already knew, and I’d failed. There was no point in engaging with the rest of the night when I would be right back here, this time tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

I was lying on the kitchen floor when he appeared before me, looking down, disapproving.

“And again.”

I rolled my neck to the side so I didn’t have to see him, and nodded. “I know.”

“I admire your creativity,” he said. “Maybe this time some more straight-forward thinking is in order.”

I didn’t ask what he meant; it took effort even to talk, and I got the impression that he wouldn’t have answered me either way. I closed my eyes.

 

* * *

 

“Good morning,” I said to Francis. I was affecting a good mood because this was now the fourth time I’d woken up to this day and I was starting to get sick of it. “You’re being healthy today.”

“Oh, yes, that means a lot coming from you.” He raised his eyebrows. “What was it you had for dinner yesterday?”

Yesterday was already three days ago. “I don’t remember.”

“You didn’t eat anything,” Francis said. “You were so busy reading you forgot to leave your room. Leftovers?”

So I ate: cold meat and congealed rice, sitting on the kitchen counter. I retreated to my bedroom. I read French. I felt very good about how my French was coming along, and went out to find Francis.

“Can you help me find a book?” I asked.

“Can it wait?” he said. “I was just on the phone to my aunt, who was saying she’d stashed these coins—”

“Yes, I know. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

Francis made a face; I was not supposed to know about the coins in his linear world, and so I had come off dismissive. Though annoyed with me, he did help me search, and I was right, it didn’t take long. We searched in the room that Henry usually stayed in, when he was out here. I could almost feel his presence; it was strange to be thinking about Henry pottering around the country house, reading, drinking, when all I could see when I thought of him were his brains against the wall of room 3-A.

At last we found a book to suit my needs.

“ _Dictionary of Mythology_ ,” I read. “ _Mainly Classical_. This should do.”

“What do you need it for? It’s not as though Spence is going to quiz us on anything _real_.”

I knew what he meant, but this _was_ real. “I saw a God last night.” And the three nights before, but they were all the same night, so I was not about to split hairs.

“And you want to work out which one?” Francis continued to look unimpressed with me. “I’ll leave you to it.”

I was a student, not a researcher. I thought it would take me forever to leaf through the dictionary, skimming only the Greek entries and looking for certain keywords. My method was poor, but I was lucky: under _A_ I found Aἰών—Aion—a God of time. As opposed to Chronos (who I had not even considered at the time, to my embarrassment), Aion was a more minor deity but had a more onerous task: he was the God of the ages, the progenitor of our eons. He was the personification of time that had come undone. The cyclical nature of all things.

Why, of all things, did it have to be this day?

I needed a plan. Perhaps because my two attempts to head off the events at the Albemarle before they’d even happened had ended in disaster, I was determined to put myself through the whole thing again. My abortive stint as a pre-med student had disabused me of any notions I might’ve had that I was a scientific sort; now, from somewhere deep within me, the need arose to see if it would all play out the same despite these minor changes, such as my meat and rice, or the fact that I’d studied mythology as well as French. If it did, then I would have to repeat the day again, but at least I would have a better idea of how to deal with it.

Time passed, as it tends to. I was surprised at the ease with which I could now relive the day. It was tedious, there was no doubt about that, but I always did fare well with menial, repetitive work. This, and the anticipation of what would come next, propelled me through the long hours, the phone call, the now performative worry when Francis came to alert me that Charles was missing.

Of course I cared deeply for Charles myself, which helped; it was just that I was now sideways invested in the outcome of our search. I was less concerned for Charles’ fate, or even Henry’s, than I was about dissecting the skin of time and poking around at its entrails. In hindsight, I think this may have been a very weak attempt at distracting myself from the reality of it: one of my friends might die that night.

Francis and I searched diligently; we drove to all the bars, around campus and through town.

“You don’t think he’s gone to the Albemarle, do you?” Francis said.

I shook my head, pretending to think about it. “Maybe. It’s worth checking.”

The only question was what we would find when we arrived.

 

* * *

 

“From my point of view,” said Henry, “the best thing that Charles could do right now is to disappear entirely from the face of the earth.”

We heard knocking. Camilla called her brother’s name, and the door came crashing off its hinges.

This was where Charles brandished the beretta at Henry, made some threats, and Henry tried to reason with him in that misguided way of his. This was where we fought to get the gun off him. Where I was shot. Where Henry shot himself.

But the small changes had added up, and none of that happened.

Charles threw open the door and fired straight at Henry’s chest, twice.

 

* * *

 

This time he came to me in the middle of the night, as I was drifting off to sleep at last. I was unhappy with him, and I took a short tone: “When you said each of these days would be different, you were being literate.”

He only smiled.

Small ripples. Big changes. I said, “Then why let me remember?”

“I had to.” His form was so indistinct that I couldn’t tell if he really shrugged, or if I imagined it. “You were the sacrifice.”

“Then who sacrificed me?” I asked angrily.

No reply. I tried again:

“Are you Aion?”

“If you want me to be,” he said.

 

* * *

 

By now, I had forgotten my exact actions on the first iteration of today. If things were to change, then so be it. I had to go with the flow—as I would say, were I not always trying so hard to pretend I didn’t come from California—and try to fix things as they happened.

Francis paused pouring his screwdriver. I was standing there and not saying anything. He frowned. “Good morning… ?”

“Is it?” I said.

“Don’t be an ass,” he said. “It’s too early for your twee sarcasm.”

“It’s ten.”

“Or thereabouts.”

We stood for a moment, looking at one another. I said, “Don’t you ever get the sense you’ve done this all before?”

“There are many things wrong with me,” Francis said, at length, “but this horror of the mundane that you have, that’s not one of mine.”

My first instinct was to say that he was lying. But then I thought, he loved to cook, to pick flowers, to pay attention to people and details. To live in the moment. More than ever, I wished he would drag me down to earth.

I suppose I’d been looking for a sign that I wasn’t alone in this; that maybe, somewhere along the line, Aion had decided to induct another into my predicament, to aid me in making sure nobody died tonight. Of course that wasn’t to be the case. The ritual had begun, the sacrifice had been made.

As for my horror of the mundane, I was definitely not alone in that. Henry, I knew. Henry would understand.

Consigning myself to solitude, I spent that day precisely as I’d spent the last four: becoming an expert on the irregular subjunctive in French.

 

* * *

 

My next idea for how to fix things came to me in the thick of the action; though I think, in part, it was self-preservation. Charles raised his arm to shoot, and in my mind I saw vivid images of the first of these nights. This was when I had been shot. As Francis threw the glass of wine in Charles’ face, Henry rushed in, and this time, so did I.

Henry was six foot four and broad as an ox. I was just shy of six feet and had once been defeated at an arm wrestling match by Judy’s space cadet friend Tracy. This situation, taken in isolation, did not need the two of us. This situation, as it had happened once before, needed to end without either Henry _or_ Charles in possession of the gun. If I could do so much as knock it to the floor, kick it out of the way—maybe even out the window—then I would save both of them, and time would continue as normal.

Charles managed to shoot once. I watched the bullet fly between me and Henry, grazing my sleeve, and embedding itself in the wall. With renewed fervour, I grabbed at Charles’ hands and twisted. I was barely looking at what I was doing. I only thought that if his wrists were in pain he might drop the gun. There were droplets of red wine on his shirt, and suddenly they were joined by a spray of red. I panicked, fell back. I only heard the gunshot in my memory. My mind had rid itself completely of the moment itself.

This, as it turned out, was because I had somehow managed to grab the gun, and as this happened Charles had pulled the trigger, in a last ditch effort to take control. But by the time it fired, the gun was pointing at his chest. This happened in the matter of seconds.

My intervention had made things worse. Again.

“Oh, God,” I said, clutching at my stomach; the phantom pain had come back, in memory of the last time I’d been in this situation. “Fuck, Charles, I didn’t mean to—”

“You _shot_ me!” he said. His eyes were wide as quarters.

I dropped the gun, and Francis—thank God—kicked it away from the lot of us. Camilla took hold of Charles and steered him to a chair; she was not crying, but had gone white in the face. Charles was muttering incoherently, and she was telling him to hold on, hold on. I sat there uselessly. I didn’t want to make this any worse than it already was. I’d thought I had the situation in hand, but instead I’d created an even bigger mess than before.

All I wanted was for Charles to die. I felt cruel, but I also thought about falling asleep sound in the knowledge that I would wake up at the country house and I would have another chance to fix this. Aion had made me complacent. I didn’t know what I’d do when I lost this power. Probably, I would be happy.

Even if I could’ve, I wasn’t given the chance to take charge and fix this.

Henry looked down at me, pitying. “Sorry about this, Richard.”

Before I could ask him what he had to be sorry about— _I_ was the one who’d shot Charles—his knee connected with the side of my skull, and I blacked out.

 

* * *

 

I woke in a hospital bed. Despite the events of the last few days, I had not experienced deja-vu until this moment. After a few minutes of adjusting, I could see the differences in my environment: when I had been shot in the stomach, they had given me my own room, but now I was in a communal ward. My stomach felt perfectly fine, if a little hungry, but my head… God, Henry had done a number on me. I saw two figures in chairs by my bedside out of the corner of my eye, and even the act of straining my vision in that direction sent a pang through my temple. I sat, and turned my whole body to look at my companions.

Camilla sat there, and Francis, who was sleeping. Camilla put a finger to her lips.

“Charles?” I asked.

She smiled sadly. “He’s in surgery now. They sounded positive about his chances of survival.”

I tried not to let myself look disappointed; I felt spoilt, but there was no way I would be able to live with this concussion for the rest of my life. “And Henry?”

“That’s a longer story.” She glanced at Francis, and then spoke a little louder: “After he knocked you out, the innkeepers came up; they’d heard the gunshots. Henry spun some story about wrestling the gun off Charles, who was only handling it dangerously, no intent to kill. Henry… he took responsibility for the shot.”

My face contorted in surprise, and it sent fresh shockwaves through my ringing head. “Why the hell would he do that?”

“Don’t be thick, Richard.” Camilla looked seriously unimpressed with me. “You’re a liability. He knew he’d end up speaking to the police, and the fewer people involved in that, the better. He told them you fell over and hit your head on the radiator while trying to get the gun.” She paused, lowering her voice again: “And I guess he doesn’t want you in prison for manslaughter. He cares about all of us too much to see this conflict spill out past him and Charles.”

I thought about Henry shooting himself in the head. “Yeah. He does.”

“Don’t take any of this for granted,” Camilla said. “It isn’t over yet.”

If Charles lived, it certainly wouldn’t be. This was far, far worse than what had happened the first time. Henry had saved us a whole lot of trouble with what he’d done—and if that sounds callous, have pity on me. Henry had died three times in the past four days, and Charles once; as well as that, I had just shot Charles. I was angry at myself, at Charles, at Aion. I wished it had ended after the first day so that I didn’t have to keep doing it, over and over again.

This time, I was lucky in some ways, unlucky in others. A nurse came into the room and stopped by my bed. “Camilla Macaulay? Could you come with me?”

Uneasily, Camilla stood. As she was leaving the ward, she turned to look over her shoulder and gave me a shaky smile. I tried to smile back, but I don’t think it worked.

 

* * *

 

I was released from the hospital with only a minor concussion, and the three of us got back to the country house at about six in the morning. The sun was starting to come up; still, there was nothing we could do until it was later in the day, and Camilla was worn out from crying. I was expecting her to push me away like the other day—especially given that I had, effectively, murdered her brother—but I suppose without Charles and with Henry still with the police, Francis and I were all she had. We went to Francis’ room and lay down together in the king-sized bed, Francis and I either side of Camilla, like her guard of honour.

They were both so tired, they fell asleep right away. I couldn’t. I waited anxiously for Aion to appear, all the time dreading that he wouldn’t. I didn’t know how I’d be able to go ahead in this timeline.

At last he came, flickering in and out of the dimly-lit bedroom. He took a moment to settle, and then, I spoke: “How much longer? I’m so tired.”

His body heaved in the shape of a sigh. “Until we put this right.”

He was tired, too, and I caught on his mistake: “We?”

“We, my colleagues and I.” He might have waved a hand. “Your lives have been a tragedy since your friends called attention to themselves. In ending his own life, Henry impressed upon us just how bad it had become. Now I am trying to put an end to this, with your help.”

In an awful sort of way, I understood. It was not enough that I had lived through the aftermath of the bacchanal. I had not been there at the time, so this was an act of balance: I had been chosen as the sacrifice, and it was not my blood that was needed. It was my time.

“I have given you a unique gift,” he said. “Do not waste it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Is there a limit on this?”

But he didn’t reply. He just stood there, motionless, until I fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

When I woke that morning, alone in my bed, I was wracked with dizziness but my head no longer ached. In fact, my mind was clearer than it had been in days. I knew what I had to do. I felt stupid for not realising it sooner: my friends earnestly believed they had seen Dionysius on the night of their bacchanal—something I now believed, too. They might not take instantly to the idea that a God was sending me back in time to save them, but I hoped they wouldn’t refuse the concept outright.

I came downstairs and found Francis in the kitchen, making his screwdriver. The stage was set; all I had to do was give the directions.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Ten, or thereabouts,” Francis said. “I don’t know. I haven’t got a watch on.”

“Where’s Charles?”

“He came down for coffee, as per. Now he’s back in his room.” Francis gave me that same curious look. “Are you quite alright?”

Now I could go off book. “Listen, Francis, this is going to sound crazy, but this is the sixth time I’ve lived this day. At the end of each one, something terrible happens—Henry dies, or Charles—and the God of time sends me back to do it again. We need to stop it from happening this time otherwise I’m going to keep doing this for the rest of my life.”

Francis stared at me for a very, very long time, before drinking an exceptionally large mouthful of his screwdriver. “Chronos?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “Aion.”

“If it’s only one day, how does that translate to the rest of your life? Surely your soul goes back to the body in its previous state?”

“Francis, come on, the details aren’t important.”

“Fine, fine,” he said. “One more question: what have you been taking, and where can I get some?” He frowned. “Sorry. That was two questions.”

I sighed. I knew his curiosity was too good to be true. “I can prove it to you,” I said. “Your aunt’s going to call you this afternoon, and tell you that she stashed a jar of coins in the attic, back in the sixties. She’s going to tell you that you can have it if you find it.”

“Alright, Richard, nice try.” Francis laughed, a cruel smile on his face. “Why don’t you have something to eat? You shouldn’t take LSD on an empty stomach.”

He could joke about drugs all he liked; I was beginning to doubt myself. What if telling him about the phone call from his aunt would change the progression of the future?

I needn’t have worried.

At half-two, Francis knocked on my bedroom door and let himself in. I looked up from my French textbook; he was pale as death and twice as serious.

“Richard,” he said. “Want to help me look for coins in the attic?”

 

* * *

 

While we rummaged around in the attic, I told Francis the rough progression of events, starting from Henry’s phone call. I wanted to omit some of the finer details—who’d died despite my best efforts, who’d killed who—but this was Francis. He wanted to know _everything_. At first, speaking it aloud made me ill; I was cut loose to drown in the thick air of the unventilated attic, reliving my worst memories as my life flashed before my eyes. Then something curious happened. I began to feel light, as though floating back towards the surface. It was not healthy to keep so much inside. For an hour in the attic, Francis was my kindly counsellor, nodding and gasping at all the right points of the story, grabbing my hands to steady me every time it became too much.

He wanted to listen in on the call with Henry, but I was insistent. We had to do everything as close to the manner in which it had already happened, no matter what Aion insinuated. I made Francis stay in the attic while I spoke to Henry and then Charles, and I had him check Charles’ bedroom later in the evening, only coming to find me when Charles wasn’t there.

“Not that I doubted you, after the coins thing,” Francis said, getting into the driver’s seat, “but this has all gone exactly as you said it would. That’s rather impressive.”

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“I’m a bit jealous.” Hastily, Francis covered his tracks: “I mean, not of all the horrible things you’ve seen. But not everyone can say they’ve travelled through time.”

“No,” I said, “I suppose not.”

“Where did you say we drove first?”

I hoped like hell this would be the last time I went through these motions. At least I wasn’t alone this time: Francis and I discussed what we’d do once we got to the Albemarle, and how we’d diffuse the situation. I felt confident about this one. I felt like it would be the last time, though I knew better than to say for sure.

At the inn, we went straight up to room 3-A.

“What can I do for you?” Henry asked, in the manner of someone reluctantly starting a conversation with a customer who’s come into their store five minutes before closing time.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, “into a crowded place, preferably.”

“This place is never crowded,” Henry said.

Camilla’s expression was unreadable. “The parking lot will do. What’s going on?”

“Charles is on his way,” Francis said, “and he has my aunt’s beretta. I think he intends to kill you, Henry.”

Henry, who was already in a sufficiently bad mood, now looked seconds away from detonation. “How the hell can you possibly know that?”

Francis and I exchanged a glance.

“It’s a long story,” I said. About a week long.

I could see that Henry wanted to argue, but he didn’t. Camilla believed us, and that was enough for him. The four of us plodded out to the parking lot at the front of the inn. None of us were talking; Henry’s mood was infectious.

With the benefit of hindsight, I could see this mood as the precursor to his rash actions, the first time this happened. I thought he’d been annoyed that we weren’t doing well enough with Charles. But I don’t think it was about Charles at all, and it was total hubris to assume it had anything to do with me at all. It was disquiet, within himself. The second time I’d lived this day, Charles had gone the way of Henry before him. Had both of them assumed that they were the root of all our problems?

It wasn’t only that. There were those things Henry had said to me, in his garden some weeks ago, while he knelt by the rose bushes. That he hadn’t felt alive until he had taken a life. I watched him stalk ahead of us into the parking lot and imagined what might be going through his head: that compared to that vivid colour he’d seen, twice now, his life was hardly worth living.

I regretted thinking it had been a neat, easy solution, him taking the bullet for the lot of us. All this time I’d been focusing on how troubled Charles was, and hadn’t stopped to think that the inside of Henry’s mind might even be worse.

Thank God we didn’t have to wait long. Mr Hatch’s truck pulled into the parking lot and Charles got out, walking with purpose. I called his name, and he came to a standstill; he seemed surprised to see us all there. Weaving his way between cars, shoving what I knew to be the gun into his pocket, he called out, “What’s the meaning of this?”

“An intervention,” I said. “Charles, don’t get angry at us. It’s not about the drinking.” Not yet, at least. “I know you have the beretta. Killing Henry isn’t going to change anything. You’re only going to be more miserable.”

“You have _no_ idea what you’re talking about,” Charles said. “What makes you think I’m here to kill Henry?”

“Considering you’ve been ranting about how _I_ tried to kill you…” Henry said.

“And you didn’t?” Charles rounded on him. “You didn’t set me up as a patsy for the thing in April?”

“I haven’t set up anything,” Henry said, “unlike this _intervention_ —”

Francis threw his hands up. “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Richard is a time traveller. He’s been here before. Don’t think too hard about it.”

I had thought about telling the others, but not like this. Unbelievably, it worked. Henry and Charles stopped in their tracks, staring at me. I wished they’d turned to Francis instead. He was the one who’d said it, even if I was the time traveller in question.

Camilla was the first to respond, almost too calmly: “Makes sense. What do we do next?”

“Do you mean, what happens next?” I asked. She shrugged, so I continued: “The first time, Charles came into your hotel room and tried to shoot Henry. Henry, you got the gun off him, though I got shot in the stomach in the process, by a stray bullet. Then, the innkeepers were about to burst into the room, and—”

I didn’t want to finish that sentence. I made eye contact with Henry. He could work out what he’d done. I think he did, if the way he looked back at me was anything to go by.

“I’ve done this five times now,” I said. “Each night, either Charles or Henry has wound up dead.”

“Would you like us to give it a break, for your sake?” Charles asked, patronising.

I gave him an incredulous look. “Yes, actually.”

We stood for some time in total silence. Camilla was right; no part of this inn could be called crowded. This was as good as we’d get. Tentatively, I thought, _Crisis averted_.

“It’s late,” Francis said. “Let’s go back to my aunt’s and sleep on this. All of us. We can talk things out tomorrow.”

“I’m not going back with someone who’s going to try to kill me,” Henry said, matter-of-fact.

Charles seemed to be going over something in his head. He had that look of intense concentration on his face that drunkards got when they were desperately trying to rationalise like someone sober. Then, he reached into his pocket and took out the gun. He handed it to Henry, who took it with the emotion closest to surprise that I have ever seen him express.

“Truce?” Charles said.

Henry opened his mouth, and Camilla shot him a fierce look. Henry pursed his lips and nodded. “Truce.”

 

* * *

 

I woke around eleven, in the country house. I had not seen Aion that night, and I’d slept like the dead. An apt metaphor, I think, since none of us were. Dead, that is.

I don’t think I’d ever been so relieved to be alive. We’d stay here maybe a few more days, and then go back to Hampden, where I’d ace my French exam. I’d done six consecutive days of study, after all. Sometime before that, and no doubt continuing after it, we’d iron out the kinks in our friendships as best we could.

Talking things out was never so easy. Charles and Camilla’s relationship would never be the same, nor Charles and Henry’s; and, I think, were Francis and I to choose sides, we would both side with Charles. Francis because of the feelings he may still have harboured; for myself, it was because I so desperately wanted to see Charles recover. I hoped it didn’t come to choosing sides, but I also knew there was no hope we’d remain a cohesive unit of five after this. The trauma of Bunny’s murder had forced us together, and now a different sort of trauma was pulling us apart piece by piece.

But we’d do it. We’d go on, day by day. Forward with time.

I had passed out sitting upright against a couch, on the floor of the living room, my head resting on a cushion. Charles was asleep on the couch behind me, and Francis and Camilla on the one opposite, one of his arms slung loosely over her waist. Henry was awake, and sitting on the floor facing me directly. I don’t think he’d slept at all.

“Morning,” I said quietly.

“Is it true?” he said. “You really travelled through time?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I repeated yesterday, six times.”

Typical Henry, straight to the point: “How?”

“It was a God,” I said.

He nodded. “Aion.”

“Yeah.” It was so absurd I could have laughed, but I didn’t want to wake anyone. I had only just learnt that the Gods had played with our lives for sport; it didn’t shock me that Henry, as always, knew more than he was letting on. “You’ve met?”

“Once or twice,” Henry said, with a sarcastic smile. Abruptly his face fell. He said, “The first night. Did I shoot myself?”

“And the third night,” I said. I’d tell him more, if he asked, but he didn’t.

He looked down at his hands. “I won’t do that again.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”

I had been tossed about by time for the sake of his life; all of their lives. This time, I would keep that promise.


End file.
